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TMI Blog1946 (1) TMI 11X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... icial Committee and their appeal has been supported by the Attorneys-General of Alberta and New Brunswick who were admitted as interveners and were represented on the hearing. The appeal was opposed by Counsel appearing for the Attorney-General of Canada and for several Temperance Federations. 3. The object of the appeal is to challenge the decision of this Board in the case of Russell v. Reg. [1882] 7 A. C. 829 or at any rate to deny its applicability to the Act now in question. The majority of the Supreme Court held that that decision governed the present case and obliged it to answer the question referred to it in the affirmative. The statute which was declared to be within the legislative competence of the Dominion Parliament in Russell's case [1882] 7 A. C. 829 was the Canada Temperance Act, 1878. That Act has been amended from time to time by the Dominion Parliament and has been revised and re-enacted in a consolidated form on more than one occasion under the provisions of the Acts relating to the revision of Statutes of Canada. The last revision took place in 1924 under the provisions of the Dominion Act, 1924 (14 and 15 Geo. V. cap. 65) and now appears on the Statute ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... of considering whether the Canada Temperance Act of 1886 relates to the peace, order and good government of Canada in such sense as to bring its provisions within the competency of the Canadian Parliament. 6. After pointing out that the provisions of the Act of 1878 were in all material respects same as those embodied in the Act of 1886, which was the statute the Board had then to consider, he continued, The reasons which were assigned for sustaining the validity of the earlier, are, in their Lordships opinion, equally applicable to the later Act. It therefore appears to them that the decision in Russell v. Reg. [1882] 7 A. C. 829 must be accepted as an authority to extent to which it goes, namely, that the restrictive provisions of the Act of 1886, when they have been duly brought into operation in any Provincial area within the Dominion must receive effect as enactments relating to the peace, order and government of Canada. 7. In 1883, in the earlier case of Hodge v. Reg. [1883] 9 A. C. 117, the judicial Committee had referred to Russell's case [1882] 7 A. C. 829 without any indication of disapproval, nor is any to be found in the judgment of Lord Macnaughten in A.- ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... he nation from disaster. An epidemic of pestilence might conceivably have been regarded as analogous. 9. The first observation which their Lordships would make on this explanation of Russell's case [1882] 7 A. C. 829 is that the British North America Act nowhere gives power to the Dominion Parliament to legislate in matters which are properly to be regarded as exclusively within the competence of the Provincial Legislatures, merely because of the existence of an emergency. Secondly, they can find nothing in the judgment of the Board in 1882 which suggests that it proceeded on the ground of emergency; there was certainly no evidence before that Board that one existed. The Act of 1878 was a permanent not a temporary, Act, and no objection was raised to it on that account. In their Lordships opinion, the true test must be found in the real subject-matter of the legislation: if it is such that it goes beyond local or provincial concern or interests and must from its inherent nature be the concern of the Dominion as a whole (as for example in the Aeronautics case [1932] A. C. 54 and the Radio case [1932] A. C. 304 then it will fall within the competence of the Dominion Parliament ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ruled the decision had it thought it wrong. Accordingly, in the opinion of their Lordships, the decision must be regarded as firmly embodied in the constitutional law of Canada and it is impossible now to depart from it. Their Lordships have no intention, in deciding the present appeal, of embarking on a fresh disquisition as to relations between secs. 91 and 92 of the British North America Act, which have been expounded in so many reported cases; so far as the Canada Temperance Act, 1878, is concerned the question must be considered as settled once and for all. 12. The second contention of the Appellants was that in 1927, when the Statute now in force was enacted, there were no circumstances which enabled the Parliament of the Dominion to legislate anew. The Act of 1928 is one promulgated under the provisions of the Act of 1924 for the revision of the Statutes of Canada. Its full title is An Act respecting the traffic in intoxicating liquors and its short title is The Canada Temperance Act: R.S. cap. 152. As has already been said, it is, in all respects material for this appeal, identical in its terms with the Act of 1878, and also with the Act of 1886 which itself was a re ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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